JordanCornblog

Loss cracks hearts open
Grief salts the ground with tears and
Something will grow here.

Don’t be grandiose
Focus on giving yourself
What you need today.

Below (and by that I mean WAY below) is a post that I started in April of 2019. How much has changed since then…and how much, inside of me, has stayed the same? After that day I did publish a few more posts, but nothing regular. And those posts were mainly fraught with anger and angst about the state of the world, the then occupant of the White House, etc.

How much has changed…and how much has stayed the same. I write that as a statement, but it is actually more a question I need to ask myself. After all, I’m 68 years old and heading relentlessly toward 69. The past several years have aged me — not just because of the passage of time. And not just because of what has happened and been revealed, but also because of how I have spent my energy.

Too often still, albeit less than before, I check Twitter feeds that I know are just going to make me angry. I look for tweets that demand a retort. And too many hours have I spent, trying to fashion pithily devastating responses to the MAGA crowd. Lately, and this is progress, believe me, I’ve deleted those pithy tweets rather than post them and invite further exchanges that will demand retorts.

So that’s all good, but there’s still space in my brain that’s being taken up by tire-spinning ire. Why am I drawn to argue and rail against entrenched and hateful delusions? (Actually, I know why, and maybe I’ll post about that one day if I haven’t already.) But for now, the point is more to just stop. Just say no, as the woman who solved America’s drug epidemic all those years ago advised.

I went to a poetry reading yesterday. LR Berger was sharing poems from her latest book, Indebted to Wind (available at Gibson’s). It was an inspirational hour, and one that set me to thinking about what I’ve been doing with my time and life.

I have given over too much power to precisely the things that I rail against. And I can change that, with daily choices to, not look away so much as to go deeper. Going deeper means exploring new ground rather than bumping into the same wall(s) over and over. I’ve been using this angst-ridden time as a distraction. And truthfully, I have bigger fish to fry, bigger questions to ask. I mean, I’m nearing that decade that begins with a 7. Some of you, dear readers, are already there, I know. Please don’t judge me…I know I’m being a bit of a wuss. And get ready, because I’m coming!

Now, here’s that post from 2019…so much has changed and so much has stayed the same…

April 2019 — Titled “I’m Doing It, Too”

Is Elizabeth too shrill? Amy too mean? Kirsten too ambitious? Kamala too, too, too…something? I find myself worrying and opining about these things, even as I know how wrong-headed it is.

Look where judging Hillary on the basis of ‘likeability’ got us? Thanks to those who just couldn’t ‘like’ her enough to vote for her we now have an ignorant, petulant, and brutish crime boss in the White House. The only saving grace, here, is that the comb-over dude is so ignorant and inept that he is relatively ineffective. But the judges alone, supplied for our enjoyment direct from the Federalist Society to our doorstep, have set the cause of justice back for decades.

The reality is that a white male candidate is judged differently. It’s embedded in our culture and it poisons the process. Check this out: https://www.salon.com/2019/02/14/are-female-candidates-authentic-the-sexist-trope-thats-attacking-the-2020-field/